LOVE

A mash-up of Beatle songs? Sacrilege! Well, Giles Martin says in the liner notes it felt a bit like "painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa" but this isn't really the case - if you want to listen to the originals, they're still there. This project is the music for a Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas which, judging by the documentary which was on over Christmas, looks stunning. George and Giles have taken a number of Beatles songs and, with the Fabs' approval, chopped and changed them into something new. Only the string backing to Harrison's demo of "While my guitar gently weeps" was recorded specially for this CD. Snippets of songs float around and they are sometimes hard to recognise (I still haven't worked out what has been added to the chorus of "Lucy in the sky with diamonds").

Without going through every song (as they are so well known), I will just pick out the highlight and lowlights.

Highlights

As another reviewer mentioned, the segueing of Mr Kite into the guitar riff from "I Want You" is probably the best moment on the CD and still gives me shivers even though I've heard it probably 20 times. The laying of the "Within you, without you" vocal over the drum and bass pattern from "Tomorrow Never Knows" is another moment of genius. "Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing" is good although a bit short, otherwise it would have made a good single. It's the only song on the CD which is a bit "Stars on 45". "I am the Walrus" sounds fantastic, and "Revolution" leaps out of the speakers and you can understand why people took the original single back complaining about the distortion.

Lowlights

I'm not sure about the ambulance siren over "Julia" - is this intended as a reference to the death of John's mother? Also, two of the older tracks ("I want to hold your hand" and "Help") are presented pretty much as is, except for a bit of editing and crowd noise on the former, and I don't really see the point of that.

Overall, any Beatles fan should get this, if only for the fantastic-sounding 5.1 DVD.

One minor gripe - the bit which is credited as "Cry Baby Cry (transition)" is actually McCartney's short and uncredited "Can you take me back" which follows "Cry Baby Cry" on "The Beatles".